


no rest for the wicked

by peterpiperparker



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Damian Wayne is Robin, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Gen, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Maybe - Freeform, Stephanie Brown is Batgirl, Tim Drake is Red Robin, am i projecting onto steph?, bc i'm soft for them, but smaller, college is hard guys, damian wayne is also a little shit, dick grayson is a little shit, dick grayson isn't capable of that, i will die on this hill, let her be, let jason go to college, lit nerd jason, soft tim/steph, steph is just real Tired, you can prove nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:47:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24534856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterpiperparker/pseuds/peterpiperparker
Summary: steph is a tired college student, just trying to make her way to her bachelor’s degree at least. doing this simultaneously with her nightly vigilantism is difficult and exhausting, but she makes it work dammit. she doesn’t even mind too much that her aforementioned nightly vigilantism comes with strange bat people that she isn’t fully convinced are people. but if one more tights-wearing, creepily-looming bat climbs through her window on her night off to actually complete an essay for once she’s going to make them write the six page essay for her, or so help her.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Stephanie Brown & Dick Grayson, Stephanie Brown & Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown/Tim Drake
Comments: 27
Kudos: 162





	no rest for the wicked

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to my first fic in a year and a half! my soul is owed to the love of my life, [wisdom_walks_alone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdom_walks_alone), for helping and screaming with me. ily and you're my favorite x3000. anyway, enjoy, y'all

Stephanie Brown is having what she likes to call a Shit Day. She’s just tired all around, and when it starts affecting her nightly hobby she starts to rethink her priorities for the first time in—she can’t remember when. Which then causes an existential crisis that she, at the ripe age of 21, should _not_ be going through yet. Her crisis turns into an absolute nosedive of a tailspin when, of all the people in her life, _Bruce “I’m Batman” Wayne_ notices that her help on the case is turning hindrance instead and tells her to take the next few nights off the case.

“It’ll still be there when you come back,” he says.

She may or may not stare at him for five minutes too long, and he may question his stance on asking her to work with them on the Falcone case of the week, but she goes home either way. Steph is not about to look this gift horse in the mouth, even if her entire view on life has shifted a solid eighty degrees to the right in less than two minutes. 

And boy, does she not regret her decision to go home. A full night’s sleep, an actual breakfast that isn’t from a drive-thru on her way to her eight am class that she’s always been perpetually late to, and she is _on time_ to her class for the first time. In all honesty, Steph is living her best life in the first two hours of her day.

And it didn’t stop there: she’s on time to all three classes she has, she’s actually _awake_ for the classes, and her notes are helpful instead of hopeless scribbles of random key words and names of people. She’s feeling like the student she always knew she could be, but was always too _tired_ to be. 

When she gets home after her last class, she takes her time to shower and put on her comfiest pajamas, and make a dinner that isn’t frozen solid. The dinner is on the table, her books are opened and scattered around her, and Steph is feeling that ripe sense of productivity that has eluded her since she started offering the bats her help. With no risk of interruption—surely Bruce knew what a night off was when he offered her to take some—she eats lazily while working on some chemistry problems. 

She abandons the chemistry homework when she’s finished eating, and cleans her plate instead of throwing it in the dishwasher without a care. This productivity shtick ain’t so bad, it at least keeps her apartment cleaner—not _clean_ , but clean _er_.

Her planner is propped up against her bag, the day’s assignments actually written down neatly instead of rushed abbreviations that take an hour to decipher, and she gives it a look-over. Steph realizes that with this new downtime she’s been given she can actually get a head start on an essay due in a few days. “Head start” is used loosely, but starting it two days in advance is a new experience for her. She usually rushes the day of due to late nights on the streets and hopes it doesn’t actually look like it was rushed.

Blanket on, pillows fluffed behind her, and laptop fully charged, Steph settles into her couch to start this thematic essay that’s been gnawing at her mind since it was assigned. The introductory paragraph is slow to set up, but she can feel her brain gaining momentum as she puzzles out her argument. Her brow is furrowed and her fingers are flying across the keyboard, with the backspace having the most hits. She’s getting there, she _is_ , her thesis is coming together so nicely and her ideas are flowing freely, she hasn’t felt adrenaline from something other than freefalls in...months? Years? Her fingers stutter and she rereads her thesis. This is such _bull_ —

A knock on her window almost has her sprawled on the floor, and her hands catch her laptop at the last possible second. Her head snaps over to the window and there, in all his black and blue spandexed glory, was Dick Grayson, in his stupid skintight spandex suit and his stupid sheepish but pained grin, _bleeding on her fire escape_ . Which she _just cleaned her own blood off of_. 

Irritated didn’t cover the slight boiling she could feel in her veins. She gives one last look at her document as she places her laptop on the coffee table, and another knock resounds through her living room.

“Okay! Okay. You win this round, Night-dork.” Steph goes over to her window and opens the hatch, letting the first Boy Wonder climb—more like fall—into her apartment. Her eyes follow his form as he all but crawls to her kitchen’s island, his domino being tossed onto the counter carelessly. She follows slowly, trying not to hate the man before he’s done anything other than _exist_ , and maybe _breathe_ , in her apartment. “Thanks for not bleeding on my carpet, too.”

Dick glances up at her before going back to his search for her first aid kit. “My pleasure, courtesy is my middle name.” His voice is strained, but his demeanor is purposely relaxed.

“Your middle name is John.” She watches him struggle, eyes darting from him at the cabinet above her fridge, where he’s reaching up even though it’s obviously hurting him, to the drawer beside her sink where her first aid kit is tucked away.

“It’s close enough,” he says with a tight shrug. He continues to search through her baking sheets and cooling racks.

Realizing he won’t be leaving that cabinet for a while, Steph sighs and pushes his body to the right drawer. He turns that sheepish-but-pained grin at her again, and she just pushes it away from her with a groan. Dick takes a heavy seat on one of her island’s stools, opening the kit with his non-bloody hand.

“It’s my day off. Do you know what that is?” she asks him, eyeing the needle and thread in his hands with mild interest as he misses the needle’s eye twice before taking it and threading it herself. Exasperation bubbles to the surface, and after Dick starts stitching his side she shuffles away to the couch. That grin seems permanently fixed on his face whenever she looks at him, so she stops looking at him and busies herself with folding the blanket that fell to the floor with her. “It’s this really cool thing where I stay home and _not_ do what I would normally do. Like deal with your blood in my apartment.”

For a brief moment only Steph’s defeated sigh and Dick’s pained breaths are all that can be heard, and then Dick breaks it between stitches. “Yeah, sorry about this.” That grin is facing her and she looks at the blanket like it has a map that will lead her out of this conversation. Hell, out of this entire _interaction_. “You were the closest safe house, and I had a bit of a...situation.” He gestures to his side meaningfully with his head, as if Steph has no idea what situation he could possibly be referring to. “Hey, can you hand me the scissors?”

Dropping the blanket on the couch, Steph grabs the scissors from the other side of the island and hands them to him. He thanks her softly in that Earnest and Sincere Dick Grayson way, which makes it increasingly hard to be irritated with him, which in _itself_ is irritating. He cuts the thread and ties it off a little sloppily, but effectively. 

“There, all done and no one’s dead.” Dick stands up, grunting only slightly as he does so, and sets everything back in the first aid kit. 

Steph notices that he puts it all in more neatly than it had been to begin with—she’s always in a hurry to get it back in the drawer and get to bed, don’t _judge_ —and begrudgingly takes it when he hands it to her gently. She can feel Dick’s eyes on her as she puts it in its drawer, then she turns to face him, leaning against the drawer as it shuts. “Okay, you’re no longer in danger of dying, and I have an essay to write, so shoo.” She makes a shooing motion with her hands. 

Her weight is fully being supported by her counter and Dick is looking at her with his kicked puppy eyes that make her give in sooner than she would like to admit. Steph slumps down a little more, legs stretched out in front of her and feet flat against the floor. She meets his gaze head on, feeling all the productivity and triumph from the day drain out of her so fast she’s a little dizzy. “What.”

His pout deepens, and she can tell he knows exactly what he’s doing. “I feel _bad_ , Steph.” Dick leans into the stool’s back and flattens his hands on the island’s counter. “I didn’t mean to _intrude_.” 

And _there’s_ the Dick Grayson Guilt Trip. 

Steph’s eyes trail over to her laptop one last time, the screen gone black from inactivity. She huffs a laugh, because _this is her life_ , and it actually feels more real _with a newly-stitched up dude in her kitchen_ than writing an essay early. For the second time in less than two days she finds herself having a mini crisis, but Dick’s puppy dog eyes snap her back. Steph rolls her eyes, dragging herself to her fridge. “You’re not intruding, Dick.” 

Dick’s grin goes from sheepish to genuine with a touch of triumph, and he leans his body forward against the counter. “Great! So how does a nice midnight snack sound?”

She looks away from the orange juice she’s pulling off the shelf to stare at Dick in distrust. “You aren’t going near my stove, Grayson. I don’t need a small fire to deal with on top of my bloody fire escape.” A glass is taken from the shelf beside the fridge, and as she pours the juice into it she lets herself grin at Dick’s spluttering. 

“I wouldn’t burn your kitchen down this time! I’ve gotten better,” he promises, pointing a red stained finger in her direction. Steph continues to stare at him with that deadpan expression she practiced from Alfred, though she knows hers isn’t half as successful as the stern butler’s. “I’ve been practicing!”

“Well, you can practice somewhere that _isn’t_ my kitchen. I’ll make us pancakes if you stop looking at me like I took Jason’s gun to your favorite suit,” she says, bringing her glass to her lips. 

Dick nods, pointedly looking away from her and over at the laptop on the coffee table, and wisely stays silent for the moment.

Steph whips the batter up as quickly as she can, flour settling on her shirt and the counter despite her careful measuring and whisking. The stack of pancakes towers on her chipped plate, and when the batter runs out she splits them between the two of them. 

They eat in relative silence, until Steph breaks it when she finishes eating, feeling exhaustion seep into her bones. She eyes the clock on her microwave, the green numbers flashing _12:45_ ; her 9:30 class crosses her mind like a neon sign saying _go to bed, dumbass_. Tense hands rub at her eyes before she pushes her chair back.

“This has been a lovely, if not _bloody_ , visit,” she says, picking up her plate and stealing Dick’s even though he still had a couple bites left.

“Hey!”

She ignores this maturely, cleaning the plates and feeling satisfaction in her petty revenge. “But it’s getting late and I’m tired. You know the exit.”

Without waiting to make sure he actually leaves, Steph drags herself to her bedroom and kicks the door shut with her foot. In the next moment she’s face down on her bed and passes out when her head hits the duvet.

 _Surely tomorrow will be better_ is the last thought that dashes through her sleep-muddled mind.

\---

 _Tomorrow isn’t better_ . She sleeps through her alarm, and misses her first class. She curses Dick’s name her whole drive to campus while she chugs coffee. She doesn’t even _like_ coffee.

The one class she’s able to make it to sucks the joy of life out of her, and when she tries to heat up the leftovers she brought with her for lunch the microwave went up in flames.

(Yeah, Bruce will be the one getting _that_ bill.)

Steph trudges into her apartment and just as she closes the door she realizes that she still has that essay, and she _really_ doesn’t want to have to do it all on the last day possible. She doesn’t even have a complete introduction paragraph.

So she makes a nice batch of waffles to help lick her wounds, and when she’s full and feeling slightly better she sets forth to spite-finish her essay.

Her essay is actually coming along, one body paragraph finished and her argument set in stone, and she’s feeling that satisfaction building in her gut. A smile is tugging at her lips, and the idea of finishing it early is seeming more plausible. 

But then her window is being slammed open and a small body is shoved through.

Stephanie most definitely does _not_ scream, and she will forever deny it.

Timothy “Pain in Steph’s Ass” Drake climbs in after Damian—who’s becoming increasingly feral by the second—and the laptop is abandoned once again. Unlike last night, Steph has no hopes of getting back to the document and has resigned herself to her fate of finishing it all tomorrow.

Steph eyes the feral child practically vibrating with rage, then looks over at Tim, who appears to be as calm as can be when paired with a murderous child. After shutting the window behind him, Tim gives a little wave, pulling his domino off with the motion. “Hey, honey, I’m home?”

All that satisfaction left her in droves, and she stalks over to her laptop and shuts it with a _snap_. 

Out of the corner of her eye she can see Tim flinch just barely, and a smidge of satisfaction returns, but it’s quickly taken away when she notices Damian’s glare has settled on her. The sigh that leaves her body is heavy and tired, but she pushes forward and leans against the back of her couch to stare them down nonetheless.

“Tim, babe, what the _hell_ do you want on my night off?” Steph crosses her arms over her chest, resting her chin in one of her palms. She glances over at Damian again but looks away from his piercing green eyes that promise pain. “And why does the bat-brat look ready to put me in a real grave?”

Tim turns to Damian with a grimace, and tries to start explaining, “You’re the only one technically _available_ tonight, so—”

Damian cuts him off sharply. “So you need to help us with this lead so we can leave and attend more _pressing_ matters. After all, _crime doesn’t take nights off_.”

Tim hides his face in his hands, muffling a groan. “I told you to let me do the talking.”

The smaller boy turns on his heel, his cape fluttering behind him, making him look just like Batman after a scolding for a night gone worse than it should have. “I agreed to nothing of the sort, Drake.” He walks like he’s commanding the room, rummaging through Steph’s fridge as if he has the _right_. Like he’s Bruce Wayne and could buy her out of house and home. 

(Well, he actually _could,_ in all likelihood.)

Steph doesn’t like the comparison her mind is making, so she interrupts before it can go any further. “I don’t care who does the talking, just give me the info so you can leave faster.”

Tim’s hands run down his face and he looks at Steph pleadingly. “I know it’s your night off, but no one else would answer their comms and we really need an extra pair of eyes on this case. We’re driving ourselves crazy looking at the same clues over and over.”

Steph sighs, and takes in the bags under Tim’s eyes and Damian’s tensed shoulders. She lets out a groan, leaning against the couch back even heavier and getting a sense of deja vu with this feeling of defeat. “Okay.”

Damian scoffs from his place at her fridge before he moves on to browsing through her cabinets. “Of course you will, it’s your duty.”

Tim interrupts before Steph can retaliate with her, arguably, witty and biting remark. “Great, thank you, I love you, please look at the file.”

She begrudgingly takes the folder from her boyfriend’s hand, moving to plop on the couch. Papers are strewn about within seconds, and as Steph scans the information her mind is happy to have something more familiar to focus on. 

It’s quiet aside from pages shuffling and Damian finally finding suitable tea bags, filling her kettle with water. Tim settles down next to her, relaxing for what must be the first time tonight.

“Got stuck with Bruce Jr.? What’d you do to get _that_ sentence?” she asks, eyes not leaving the pages.

Tim scoots in closer. “I was the only one who didn’t have an excuse not to work with him.”

Steph’s pen circles and connects a few sentences, and she hands the paper to Tim. She moves on to the next paper, scanning for pertinent facts, adding more circles and lines. “Dick wouldn’t take him tonight?”

He looks over her shoulder, taking papers as she passes them off and connects the dots she’s connecting. “He’s on medical leave. Stab wound, I think?”

Her pen stops mid-circle before she forces herself to finish the marking. “Yeah, that was a thing.”

“‘That was a thing’?” Tim asks as he leans back, staring at Steph in mild confusion. 

“Yeah, he used my needle and thread last night. Didn’t think it would actually be an issue for him,” she says as calmly as she can, very aware of the unhappy child pouring boiling water a few feet behind them. 

Sensing her forced nonchalance—and glancing back at Damian before looking back at her—he drops it. 

“It’s the bodyguard, he’s the link,” she declares, pushing the papers into the folder and the folder into Tim’s lap. “Good luck, he’s built like a linebacker.”

Damian sniffs derisively, sipping his tea like the snooty brat he was raised to be. “If I had had another half hour—”

“Thanks, you’re the best,” Tim says loudly, giving Damian a look. Damian just huffs and turns back to his tea. Tim gives Steph a kiss on her cheek before standing and putting his domino back on. “Damian, we should get going so we can get some intel before we have to head home.”

Steph jumps up and slides the window open, happy to let the two walking headaches exit her premises. “Yep, you should get going, little demon.”

Damian sneers at her, but finishes his tea and puts his mug in the sink. “Thank you for your _hospitality_ , brat-girl.” He walks past her to the window ledge, sliding out to the fire escape. “The state of your fire escape is appalling.”

“Yeah, whatever bat-brat, go annoy that bodyguard for a while,” she replies, giving him a slight push as she walks by to go put his mug in the dishwasher and avoiding the right hook thrown back at her. She passes Tim and gives him a quick kiss while pointedly ignoring Damian’s age-appropriate hiss of disgust. 

“See you Friday?” Tim asks before he follows Damian out the window.

Steph looks back from the sink, and smiles. “Yep, as always.”

Tim disappears from her fire escape and Steph’s shoulders fall slightly. After the dishwasher is turned on because _she’s a responsible adult and chores are her bitch_ , she falls into bed.

 _Tomorrow,_ she thinks, _is another day, huh?_

\---

Steph wakes up to sunlight filtering through her curtains and _11:14_ on her alarm clock. The light bugs her into getting up, but she feels rested enough as she stretches her joints. She takes a hot shower, and gets into comfy sweats and a sweater.

Thursdays will be her favorite day for the next two months. No classes make for a relaxed and mostly productive day, if not wonderful for her sanity.

So she takes her time making a nice breakfast of eggs and toast, and after unloading the dishwasher and putting her breakfast dishes into it, she’s feeling happy and productive. Her laptop is open and ready, and she settles in for the long haul to _finish this goddamn essay_.

She’s working at a steady pace, getting into the zone of writing about themes and connecting ideas and only semi-hating it. The time passes quickly, and she’s halfway to her six page minimum and mentally screaming because she’s gotten this far, she can _finish it on time_ for the first time in years.

It’s when she’s just reached the middle of her fourth page that her window is smashed to pieces, glass littering her floor.

Steph is ready to cry.

But she’s been taught—well, she inferred from a few grunts—to use emotion as a driving force and grabs her slugger from under the couch and swings it at the figure, who is distracted by trying to avoid the shards of glass underfoot. Through his lapse of attention, he doesn’t dodge fast enough.

Jason now has a bruise blooming on his right shoulder blade, his face contorted in pain before twisting into a scowl aimed at Steph. Normally, it would have been effective, and it would have been if Steph wasn’t so angry and stressed. She drops her bat, and it rolls under her coffee table.

“It’s the _middle_ of the _fucking_ day, why the everloving _fuck_ are you running around in your furry suit, you jackass?”

Jason’s scowl deepens, offense written over every inch of his face. He brushes glass off his shoulders, letting the pieces clatter against their kin on the floor. “I am _not_ like the bat-freaks, Brown. I _was_ trying to go undercover in a drug gang’s meeting, but I was found out. I lost them a few blocks back, so I had to move to a safe location before they caught my trail again. I caught sight of one of the guys just as I was climbing up so I was a bit _rushed_ . You were closest, don’t be thinkin’ anything of it, you wouldn’t be my first choice if I _had_ a choice.”

“Oh boy, you sure know how to make a girl feel _special_ , Todd.” She stalks over to the closet in the hall, and when she’s back in front of him she hands him the broom and dustpan.

He takes it and just stares at it for a second before looking back up at her with an eyebrow raised. “You’re kidding me.”

Steph shakes her head. “Nope.”

Jason heaves a sigh, but starts sweeping the glass into a pile. As he cleans his mess, Steph looks over at the microwave clock. _4:06_. She curses under her breath, rubbing her eyes for a moment to relieve the headache coming on.

“Did I interrupt something?”

She lowers her hands, crossing her arms, to see Jason looking up at her questioningly. She shrugs with one shoulder, glancing at her laptop. “Only an essay that the universe doesn’t want me to finish on time. No biggie.”

Jason hums lightly with a nod, brushing the glass into the dustpan, but doesn’t say anything more. An idea sparks in Steph’s muddled brain, and she eyes Jason’s hunched form with more interest.

“Hey, Jay, you like literature, right?” A content smile plays on Steph’s lips.

Jason glanced up, but stopped his motion as soon as he caught sight of the cat who ate the canary. “I...dabble.” He hesitates, as if he doesn’t want to finish his thought, but he does anyway. “Why?”

“Well, you see, my dear Jaybird—”

“—Don’t call me that—”

“—this essay is on Persuasion, which I didn’t actually read? Anyway—”

“— _didn’t actually read, what the fuck is wrong with you_ —”

“—I’m writing about the theme of appearances, and my argument is actually kinda strong?”

Jason throws the glass into the trash can, then moves to sit on the couch and grabs her laptop. “All right. Open the doc.”

Steph grins, taking the laptop and doing as he asked. _It worked. It was the longest of shots and it fucking worked_. He reads what she has and gives honest—and really harsh?—critiques, picking her essay apart.

“Then _fix it_ !” she exclaims, throwing her hands in the air. She can only take so much criticism before it gets on her nerves. “How _do_ I structure it, oh, _master writer_ ? If my quotes are so stupid, what quotes would be _better_?”

Off the top of his head, Jason lists three quotes. And she has to admit it: they fit her argument _perfectly_. She grumbles as she flips through the book to find the quotes.

As he rambles on about the theme and effective arguments, Steph absentmindedly reflects that this would have been a great punishment if _he didn’t look like he was enjoying it so damn much_. In fact, it makes her connect school to Jason, and how he was a really good student from what Alfred says.

His borderline monologue is cut off as Steph sits up and looks at him curiously. Jason realizes that she hasn’t been listening and gives her an unamused look. “Really?”

She ignores him. “Why didn’t you go on to college?”

Taken aback by the random question, Jason looks more like a deer in headlights than the terrorizer of Gotham’s crime syndicate. “Uh, because I’m legally dead?”

Steph rolls her eyes. “Please, your dad’s the wealthiest guy in Gotham, he can pull some strings in the right places.” She stops at the angry fire building in his eyes at the mention of Bruce and backtracks like the expert she is. “ _Or_ you could literally make a fake identity? You’re a crime lord, you aren’t above fake identities, are you?”

Jason looks lost in thought for a moment, before seamlessly returning to his essay argument-turned-rant as if he hadn’t even stopped. Steph notes the sore subject and actually pays attention this time around, fixing the essay with his help.

\---

For the first time in weeks, Steph barges through Jason’s window with a crazed grin on her face.

“Uh, what the fuck are you doing here?” Jason asks from his stove, water boiling beside him.

She doesn’t reply, just walks over to him with a bounce in her step, shoving a stack of papers in his face. The red A is clear as day, and Jason will forever deny the proud grin and high five that overtakes him in that moment.


End file.
